From what I saw of the punk crowds in Dallas, there were about three main types of punk. One was the type I hung out with, which was basically a normal kid who felt kind of excluded from whatever crowds were in at his school and started hanging out with other kids listening to punk-type music. Then there were the older punk types - the people who tended to fit a lot closer to what punk was in the early 80's. And then there were the skin-heads, who of course weren't what skin-heads originally were, but who called themselves skin-heads.
Of course, the people in the first group were the people who felt outcast. And the easiest way to feel like an outcast in a lot of Dallas schools is to be a different race from the majority of students at the school. Which means that a lot of the first punk crowd were exact sort of people the third punk crowd had decided to hate. That wasn't very cool.
But the important thing was, no one seemed to care. There were people at Common Ground who said you had to be white to be human, and there were people who weren't white. There were people who wanted to tear down the government by any means available, and there were people who felt uncomfortable breaking laws. And even though there were a lot of very violent people there, the only fights that ever broke out were between people who knew each other. And those fights were rare.
Basically, there was a sign by the door that said a lot of things, one of which was "No Fists," and there were a lot of people who took that sign seriously. And that was cool.
That is pretty cool. But what about the other clubs?
How about a pointless reference to Chris?